Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Monday June 25, 2012 @06:22PM
from the snuck-in-through-the-indo-american-wormhole dept.

dcblogs writes "In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Monday on Arizona's immigration enforcement law, H-1B workers are being advised to keep their papers on them. About half of all H-1B visa holders are employed in tech occupations. The court struck down several parts of Arizona's law but nonetheless left in place a core provision allowing police officers to check the immigration status of people in the state at specific times. How complicated this gets may depend on the training of the police officer, his or her knowledge of work visas, and whether an H-1B worker in the state has an Arizona's driver's license. An Arizona state driver's license provides the presumption of legal residency. Nonetheless, H-1B workers could become entangled in this law and suffer delays and even detention while local police, especially those officers and departments unfamiliar with immigration documentation."

There's a law in the states that citizens are not required to carry identification. Thus all a foreigner has to do is state that they are a resident and there's not much an officer can do about it.

There is a big difference between "resident" and "citizen." In the United States, citizens are technically not required to carry any sort of identification, although it makes things generally easier if you do. On the other hand however, Permanent Residents AKA Green Card Holders are required by federal law to have their identification document (Green Card) on their person at all times. I believe the same goes for non-immigrant visa holders (H-1B, B-1/B-2, J-1, F-1,...).
That being said, if you claim you are a citizen, there is not much they can do on the spot unless they look you up, but if you call their bluff, be prepared to face the consequences. Making a false statement of United States Citizenship carries stiff penalties which can include deportation and extended bans from readmission into the USA.

Therein lies the problem. A green card holder can demonstrate their status easily enough. The 17 year old US born child of Mexican immigrants who doesn't have a driver's license cannot.

The US Citizen might protest his status, but the officer may well detain him while they conduct an investigation. In other words US citizens could end up arrested and detained while their status is clarified.

The problem comes when a citizen who is NOT carrying id is hassled by the police because he is the wrong skin color, speaks with an accent, or doesn't - or chooses not to - speak clear English.

At this point you have an American Citizen whose civil rights are being violated based on a "protected" issue such as skin color, national or presumed national origin, race, etc.

This leave the police very little choice:

Either ask for papers from people independent of reasons that boil down to "He looks Mexican" or don't ask for papers at all.

If cops in your town are NOT engaged in pulling people over for "driving while Hispanic" and they demand papers from EVERYONE they pull over or, in the absence of papers, demand that the person they pull over sign an affidavit stating their citizenship and/or visa status, then they'll be immune from accusations of illegal discrimination. Lying on an affidavit is perjury.

There's a law in the states that citizens are not required to carry identification. Thus all a foreigner has to do is state that they are a resident and there's not much an officer can do about it.

Kinda naive, aren't we?;-) If you're a citizen, but don't "look right", there's a lot that any police officer can do to you.

Fact is, the officer can arrest anyone, for any reason, or for no reason at all. If you object or resist, you'll be held overnight or longer. Then, when they're tired of harassing you, they kick you out. If you try to file charges, you find that there's no record you were ever there, and they all insist that they've never seen you before. This isn't at all a hypothetical scenario. It's pretty well understood by most non-white Americans over the age of 5.

There's always lots a police officer can do to you if he wants to make your life difficult.

(If you have some witnesses, perhaps you can file charges against them. But chances are, your friends won't be too quick to volunteer as a witness. That would result in their names being in the police department's records.;-)

Fact is, the officer can arrest anyone, for any reason, or for no reason at all. If you object or resist, you'll be held overnight or longer. Then, when they're tired of harassing you, they kick you out. If you try to file charges, you find that there's no record you were ever there, and they all insist that they've never seen you before. This isn't at all a hypothetical scenario. It's pretty well understood by most non-white Americans over the age of 5.

And strip-searched. Don't forget that the same SCOTUS that says it's ok to demand proof of citizenship says that the police can strip-search you without bringing up any charges. Put those two things together, sprinkle on good old fashion racial profiling, and voila legal shelter for racists and xenophobes to harass people for the crime of being non-white in a border state.

For the purpose of Arizona's law, an Arizona drivers license is de facto proof of legal residence. Once it's displayed to Arizona police enforcing this law, any and all questions surrounding immigration status end.

Where in the constitution does it say that US citizens have to register with Arizon in order not to be illegally hassled by racists on the way through? What if you're oh, I don't know, New Mexican and Hispanic (like the majority in NM)? It's not like the states are next door to one another or anything.

I lived in Russia for years, got asked for my papers all the time. It didn't bother me. Just about any other country requires foreigners to carry their papers 100% of the time, regardless of color. If I became a citizen of Russia, I'd still be asked for papers just because I look and sound American. There's no way to get around that and still allow Russia to have orderly immigration.

I don't think skin color is a strong motivator for the Arizona law. I think if everyone in Mexico were white, the same la

I've traveled a bit myself, 45 countries (but not Russia). The nearly universal advice I'm given in each country is to keep my passport locked up in the hotel safe during a stay. I have never had my papers checked except when entering or leaving a country or making a transaction that requires identification. In those cases, I knew enough to have my passport with me. I do carry a photocopy of the 1st two pages of my passport just in case I am stopped, but have never had to use it.

I lived in Russia for years, got asked for my papers all the time. It didn't bother me. Just about any other country requires foreigners to carry their papers 100% of the time, regardless of color. If I became a citizen of Russia, I'd still be asked for papers just because I look and sound American. There's no way to get around that and still allow Russia to have orderly immigration.

If you were born in Russia to Russian parents, raised there, and lived there for all your life, you'd still be asked for papers. Russian law requires all citizens to have passports from the age of 14, and provide them on demand to law enforcement officials. This is largely inherited from the USSR.

As a Russian, I don't like it at all and think it's a very bad system.

There's no way to get around that and still allow Russia to have orderly immigration.

Now this really made me laugh. By all accounts, Moscow alone has several million illegal immigrants, mostly from Central Asia. And you know what "papers please" is used for in practice? Not to kick them out, no. It's used by cops to coerce bribes from them. Why would they arrest people who don't have any legal status, and are required to prove it every time they're seen on the streets, if they can be milked again and again and again?

The problem with your Russia anecdote is that you were a foreign citizen in Russia and thus required to carry papers.

I'm ethnically Indian (India, not Native American). I was also born in the United States. But if you look at me from across the street, you'd have no way of knowing that I was a citizen and born here. So lets say a cop in Arizona asks me to identify myself and show some ID -- as a citizen, I'm actually not required to carry around my ID. So what happens? I get hauled down to the police station until I can prove that I'm in this country legally.

A blond Caucasian US citizen wouldn't face the same issue. They probably wouldn't even be stopped in the first place, but if they were the cop would quickly decide, even without seeing ID, that the individual was in the country legally based on look and accent.

That's why it's racism -- because two people with identical legal status would be treated differently just because of the color of their skin.

Except the law you're complaining about explicitly prohibits that. Try reading the law instead of the president's misinterpretation of it.

Even if you do, it can be difficult. A few years ago, Japan had a program offering to pay dekasegi (Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry who moved to Japan) to leave Japan, go back to Brazil, or Peru, or wherever, and permanently give up their visas. I don't know if it's still going on.

Enforcing every law, aside from somehow knowing them all, would grind the system to a halt. Discretion has been around for a long time. Could you imagine what would happen if every jaywalker got hauled into court? If everyone who went over the speed limit got a ticket?

That's a problem with the laws; not anything else. Selective enforcement of the law is a democratic society's back door to tyranny. Whereas a despot requires no reason to imprison anyone he pleases on a whim, that's not possible in a government of limited power unless you ensure that everyone is guilty of some kind of crime. Once you've achieved that, imprisoning who you please is a simple matter of finding which of the innumerable laws they've violated and using those as an excuse to do what the despot could have done just slightly easier.

Fix the laws or become a prisoner of them, subject to the whims of the ruling class.

If the federal government doesn't want to enforce laws, that's because they have a reason to - no need for states to get involved in international affairs.

(The answer is: Americans want illegal immigration to continue)

Because most of the law enforcement and other government services that are expended because of illegal aliens happen at the state and local levels. It's easy for the federal government to be lazy here because the federal politicians get the support for looking the other way AND they're not the ones bearing the burden of it. You might as well ask why a heavily-polluting industry doesn't want anti-pollution laws to be enforced.

And no, most Americans don't want illegal immigration to continue. I know a very vocal minority likes to portray their view as representative of the general population but it isn't. The only ones who benefit from it are: big businesses who like paying lower wages, the Republican candidates they tend to sponsor, and Democrat candidates who score points with their base by pandering to the Hispanic minority.

Most people are not majority shareholders in large corporations. Most people are not Republican federal politicians receiving campaign contributions. Most people are not federal Democrat politicians receiving votes from well-meaning but stupid people who feel good about making everything a racial issue only because they happen to be on the privileged side of this particular one.

The vast majority of Americans gain nothing from this at all. The legal American citizens who live in places with large illegal alien populations not only fail to gain, but lose a lot. They lose in the form of lower wages, higher crime, language barriers, and money leaving their local communities because it's being sent to relatives in foreign nations. When it turns out they don't want to be exploited like this, they're told about how "racist" they are for not liking it, just to add some insult to injury. They're pretty damned tired of it. Do you blame them? Those legal American citizens are the hosts, while the federal political machine that benefits from this is the parasite.

They're politically fighting back at the state level because they have no voice at all on the federal level. They can't outclass the corporate sponsorship on the Republican side. Meanwhile the Democrat party will never give up its obsession with dividing people by race because playing various racial/ethnic groups against each other is how they get many of their votes. So the people are taking the options that are still available to them. All you are seeing here is that the people are better represented in state and local governments than they could ever dream of being in the federal government. This is nothing new.

Again, do you blame them? It's all easy to play armchair critic and forget that this is a direct response to a real problem.

The ones that can't be (notoriously, strawberries), are specialty crops.

Illegal immigration does not bring the price per bushel of wheat down in any noticable maner. What is allready obscenely cheap to produce compared to manually picked crops, when you count only total laborers involved. (A single farmer plows, irrigates, sows, fertilizes, and sprays insecticide on a huge plot of land. Several people show up to harvest, only because it takes several drivers to haul the crop off, and because many hands make lighter work, and more fields can be harvested PER DAY. Compare to strawberries, which take DAYS to harvest one field.

You don't get "cheap food" from illegal labor. You get cheap luxuries from illegal labor.

The problem is that despite all the yammering about skilled vs unskilled labor, the ability to withstand manual labor in the summer sun all day long is very much an acquired skill, one which a lot of legal workers don't have, and no about of screaming at unemployment recipients will magically imbue it.

Ooh you made a typo there:Just like Germany in 2012. There fixed that for you.

Oh but you were making a Nazi refernce to sound deep! Well guess what: They also drank beer and taught math in Germany in 1938 too! Therefore, we should outlaw beer and math or else it's Hitler all over again!

On the other side, the Conservatives reacted by enacting local state laws such as what Arizona, Alabama, Virginia are doing

It isn't that...I mean AZ isn't overrun by conservatives...but they ARE being overrun by illegals, and the toll it is taking on crime, overburdened schools, hospitals and other state/city services is immense.

From the polls I've seen, this kind of law, holds widespread support by the majority of the whole state....as it does in many border states that are having to deal with this...something other states can't comprehend since they're not wearing the same shoes.

It IS a major problem, and the federal govt. is not enforcing the laws on the books. If you could stop the flood of people coming in, and then revamp the immigration system...well, it would help.

I don't think the majority of people have a problem with legal immigration, but it has to be monitored and metered. The unbrideled flow of illegal people in the country is taking its toll on the system, and it isn't fair to the many thousands of people from all over the world, trying to wait in line and come here to become US citizens properly, with all the rewards and obligations that entails, including important requirements such as proficiency in English...something important to integrating into the larger American culture, rather than isolating into small communities cut off from the larger culture and population.

On the high level, presidental level, sure, it is all political...but if you had to live and deal with the situation that border states with Mexico are having to deal with...you'll find it cuts largely across both political ideals with regard to support for securing the borders and doing something about cutting the flow of ILLEGAL immigrants flooding those states.

So what exactly do you think a child who is being brought into the US illegally by his/her parents should do in their situation? Run away? Snitch on their own parents? What if they're too young at the time to even be aware of the illegality of their crossing, or it's repercussions? Hell, some of those kids don't even know they're here illegally until the government launches into a deportation.

And then what? They're supposed to go back to a country where they have no ties, may not remember, and may not even speak the language? Leave the only home they've ever known because of something their *parents* did when they were children?

You people are just sick. Whatever one might think the policy should be on adults who cross the border illegally; to oppose the Dream Act, or its replication in Obama's recent directive, isn't just morally repugnant. It's inhuman and sadistic.

I'm a caucasian Canadian citizen living in Arizona on TN-status as a Management Consultant, and I have a valid Arizona driver's license. I doubt that I will be randomly asked for my immigration papers. I somehow don't think that I'm the reason Jan Brewer, Joe Arpaio and company came up with this law.

You're already required to carry a drivers license in every state in the US while you're driving. Further, in every state in the US, if you're unable or otherwise refuse to identify yourself to police, you can be detained until your identity can be confirmed. Further still, Federal law (8 USC 1304(e) 264(e)) requires all non-citizens to carry their immigration "papers" with them at all times.

Your outrage is based entirely on your ignorance of existing laws. Arizona hasn't done anything extraordinary here. They copied existing Federal law and added in extra protections to keep hassles for citizens to a minimum (Arizona drivers license being considered legal proof of residence for the purposes of this law). They did so because they wanted to do what the Federal government has failed to do: enforce immigration law.

While I don't like the law or the checking... this type of argument is not a good way to argue about it. Why should they routinely and often check whites? Arizona is on the border of Mexico. If you have some stats about how many illegally residing Caucasians are in Arizona vs. illegally residing Mexicans that show there's a surprisingly large portion, those would be welcome. Otherwise, I will continue to assume that most of those illegally residing in Arizona, are, in fact, Mexican, due to proximity to Mexico.

On the other hand, if this were Washington, I would assume most of them are from B.C., so I would be interested in B.C.'s demographics.

That said, the real issue, to me, is not racial profiling per se; the real issue is that I don't think it's fair that you always have to carry ID or go to jail... i.e., be guilty until proven innocent. Subpoena for proof of citizenship when having actually been involved in something else illegal? Fine. But just being routinely stopped for something that you may not have even done and having to prove your citizenship on the spot?

(for example: if you're speeding, get pulled over, don't have a license... I see no reason why it's unfair to be penalized in whatever way the law states for driving without a license plus having to prove that you're a citizen in the first place; however, if you are pulled over for speeding and DO have your license, then it's not fair to have to prove citizenship... after-all, you have a license, which is all I [a citizen] carry, so if there's a problem with licenses, then the DMV should be looked at.)

Which is exactly my point. What's your proof of citizenship on-site if a cop decides to ask you for one?

The recent changes in state regulations that ask foreign people to renew their driver license is a mechanism to enforce immigration policies. I'd have agreed if, like a couple of years ago, the driver license was given for the same 5 years as the citizens.

But I'm really wondering what are the implications of this for citizens, would they have to carry passports as well?

If you are a tourist you are screwed. The US government itself recommends you leave your passport in the hotel safe rather than risk losing it and the problem and time required to obtain a replacement. The obvious problem is as a foreign tourist in Arizona if you get robbed and your passport is stolen, should you attempt to report it you will immediately be arrested placed in privatised for profit prison for lack of identification, forcing you to leave the state prior to reporting the crime or simply avoiding the state along with the rest of the US just to be safe.

You are not required to carry your papers with you. The OP misreported this part. The police are allowed to request that you prove citizenship but there presumably a period of time for you to produce papers.

If you are a tourist you have already decided that full naked body scans and groping are ok with you. If you were careless enough to lose your documentation and you get stopped by police you will likely have to visit a police station until they learn that your flight & hotel reservation checks out and send you on your way to your consulate for replacement documentation. You know, like nearly every other country in the world that actually concerns themselves with who crosses their borders.

The article title says... "Arizona H-1B Workers Advised to Carry Papers At All Times" (emphasis mine).

Pf course, the question becomes "who is offering that advice?"

And the answer appears to be...

Patrick Thibodeau, the author of TFA.

Note, as a useful reference, the comment in TFA by Michael Wildes, managing partner at Wildes & Weinberg in New York (an immigration law firm, from TFA) that clients to carry proper documentation of their legal status.

Yes, and it makes sense. But do you have to carry it around, in case a cop decides to question your legal status in the US?
The article title says... "Arizona H-1B Workers Advised to Carry Papers At All Times" (emphasis mine).

In Arizona, having a valid driver's license provides a presumption of citizenship. The cops can inquire about citizenship if someone is pulled over at a traffic stop, or arrested because they are suspected of a crime. Now, if they're driving, they're supposed to have a license anyway. If they are arrested for a crime, documentation will be the least of their worries. I don't see a problem here.

As for as H-1B workers who might be passengers, AND don't have driver's licenses? The people of Arizona, through their representatives, have decided that some extra hassle attached to this edge case is a worthy trade-off in return for being able to do something about the serious illegal immigration problem they are experiencing. The people of Arizona have this right, as the courts have rightly upheld. It is their state.

Foreign workers are like guests in their home and it's about time this became more widely recognized. If you are a guest in my home, you will be treated with kindness and all of your civil rights will be respected because that's a minimum standard of decency. But if you bitch, complain, try to tell me how I should live, demand I accept trespassers, or in any way don't like being there, then you can kindly get the fuck out. This is the same thing at a larger scale, that's all.

I don't personally like every law on the books of every state myself, but I accept them and abide by them. If those H-1B workers truly have a problem with the law, and don't consider the benefits of living and working in the USA to be worthwhile, then their option is clear. If they think that's terrible, they should have a look sometime at Mexico's immigration laws. Mexico doesn't coddle and pander to illegal aliens, they blatantly give preferential treatment to their own citizens over legal aliens, and I don't blame them. I don't blame the people of Mexico for wanting Mexico to be primarily for Mexicans.

Even if all federal immigration laws were vigorously enforced AND all states followed Arizona's lead, the USA's immigration laws are still rather soft and egalitarian compared to the rest of the world. In light of this, I'm tired of the sense of entitlement and all the whining. The way it should work is that the USA is primarily for USA citizens (natural-born or legal naturalized immigrants) and anything we do for anyone else is out of the kindness of our hearts and will be withdrawn if it is not appreciated. That childish sense of entitlement is like anything else: it only grows if you feed it.

Welcome aboard, by the way! Sorry that Arizona is currently acting like a dumbass, but I think most Americans genuinely like that people want to come here and hang out with us. I'm glad that you found something in our home that made you want to stick around.

...not to be too facetious here, but how often does someone from India or Russia sneak in over the Arizona/Mexico border?

Seriously - this state law was built to stem the tide of one particular group of people. Forget your position on it and all, but consider that Montana certainly has no such laws, even though it borders a different nation as well.

So Canada will let anyone smuggle themselves into the country and allow them to stay however long they want?

No, but we tend to do more cost/benefit analysis on programs than do our American friends. If illegal immigration is costing Canada one billions dollars per year then it doesn't make sense to spend 3 billion building a fence (these are just made-up numbers to make a point). Certainly criminals are deported, but some illegal picking apples in the summer and shovelling driveways in the winter is not likely to get much attention focused on him because it's cheaper to let him stay.

I'm from Russia, and I was stopped at Arizona when I was there to see the Grand Canyon, I was originally on a business trip to California but had several free days. I'd been asked for papers when I was stopped by a police officer for riding a bicycle on sidewalk.

I didn't have my passport with me so a police officer offered to drive me to my hotel to fetch it or to drive me to the police station to check my identity there. I'd chosen to be driven to my hotel, I have a valid B1/B2 visa so it was not a problem for me.

No, I mean that producing papers was not a problem for me, so I chose the way of the least resistance.

And contrary to the popular beliefs, carrying papers and producing them at the first request of a policeman was NOT a requirement in the USSR. In fact, the citizens of the USSR could travel everywhere (including flying) within the country without showing any IDs.

That's kind of the problem here. It is a law meant to target Mexicans. The problem is that there are also legal Mexican-Americans who will get ensnared in the law as well. Believe it or not, there are brown folk in Arizona who are in the country legally. After all, we took Texas from the Mexicans. The law, as originally designed, allowed the state government to snatch people off the street if they thought they were illegal immigrants. Query: everyone admits that we're targeting Mexicans with this law, so how do you protect the rights of Mexican-Americans while still targeting illegal immigrants? Answer: you can't.

The better approach is from the demand side and go after employers of illegal immigrants. But good luck getting Arizona to target big business. Or you can check someone's immigration status after you've arrested them for another crime, which seems to be where we're headed now because it has the ancillary benefit of deporting illegal immigrants who commit crimes, but it will also force illegal immigrants to walk on eggshells.

And there is the delusion again. I get excellent care in the socialised system in.au, but americans laughably think they get better care, without ever having experienced it. Going by the number of malpractice suits I hear of in the US i doubt the qualit is very good at all!

The only problems with immigrants are due to our own stupid laws that attract the wrong kind of immigrants and the problems they bring. The war on drugs brings the drug gangs, the war on poverty brings the destitute that aren't here to work but be a parasite, and the war on terror brings the ever elusive mid-eastern terrorist posing as a mexican.

We're talking about H-1Bs, not immigrants. Yes, it is a fact that a H-1B visa is *NOT* an immigration visa, it is a temporary employment in the USA which allows that person to relocate here for the duration of employment.

But I'll bite. Here's why people are upset about it: To get H-1Bs, companies must jump through hoops, and those hoops damage our job market and the value of our jobs. Also, H-1Bs are willing to accept a lower salary because they get to live in the USA without immigrating. This is wh

You classify legal and illegal immigrants together, but they are not. Don't insult my grandparents. When Prince William County, VA, enacted a similar law, it cut down on a lot of trouble. Murders halved from 9/yr annually to 4/yr annually, because 50% of the murders were by illegal immigrants. Over $100M in english-as-a-second-language class tax money was saved. If you want to come to our country legally, learn english to pass the entrance exam first, on your own time, not on my dime. I wouldn't expect I c

And what is that "one correct conclusion", oh great enlightened master? Let me guess, it aligns well with you political idealogy, and is generally agreeable to the body of your preexisting views and biases?

Please enlighten me. I am an Arizonan, I have read up extensively on immigration issues, I spend lots of time debating and pondering them. Until, of course, I realized that both sides of the issue are full crackpots and blustering idiot ideologues.

There isn't an easy answer. There never will be. The facts which we can base an answer on are all murky and subjective. The human issues are more so. Immigration is an issue that can only be solved through unhappy compromises, and trying to balance the human elements on both sides of the equation. It is truly a textbook ethical dilemma.

Also, that report is a farce, at least for the purposes of this discussion. It says nothing about the vast majority of immigrants (illegal or non) who aren't incarcerated.

And what is that "one correct conclusion", oh great enlightened master? Let me guess, it aligns well with you political idealogy, and is generally agreeable to the body of your preexisting views and biases?

That the laws on the books, concerning immigration and anything else, should either be enforced or repealed. Is that biased enough for you?

Of course, by assuming that I must be biased against someone or something, you are confirming my point. Some kind of accusation of bias of some kind is like a hammer to so many, and by God everything suddenly looks just like a nail. Maybe if you just keep trying hard enough it will finally work?

It's like you were doing this: "Hmm. Don't like what that guy said - check. Have to portray him as biased, bigoted, or just plain unpleasant because heaven forbid two adults have a conversation about a national issue without making it personal - check. Muddy the water with "human issues" and "both sides of the equation" when concepts like "rule of law" are so damned simple - check."

Tell you what. If you truly want to be as unbiased and fair as possible, I have a proposal. Let's follow Mexico's lead and do it the way they do it! Let's harmonize our immigration laws to match theirs, the same way that copyright laws are harmonized among various nations. If you support illegal immigration, you wouldn't like that one damned bit. But it would be so unbiased!

In the absence of facts supporting their position, using the term "racist" as a weapon is all they have.

You mean like the fact that the quoted study was conducted on a prison population?

The question is, how does that compare to the recidivism rate of legal citizens who committed similar crimes? And among people who were willing to break the law just to trespass here (and that's what they are, trespassers, same as I would be if I snuck into Mexico), how much respect for our laws were you expecting them to have?

They are willing to work for very low wages, which pulls wages down for everyone. Companies are then forced to pay those lower wages to compete against the other companies that already pay low wages, thus pulling wages down for the entire working class.

So, make it trivially easy for them to be in the country legally, and thus entitled to the same workplace requirements as everyone else - minimum wage, etc.

That way they can't get tossed out of the country and they can't be exploited by dodgy companies who expect them to put up with ridiculously low wages if they don't want to be grassed up. This then means that they're no longer cheaper to hire than locals, so you may as well hire locals instead of giving the job to immigrants.

You need to be careful with being quiet too. At least in my state (Texas), refusing to provide your name, date of birth, and home address if you've been arrested and the officer has asked it of you is considered an additional offense. Several other states criminalize refusing to provide your name [wikipedia.org] even before you're arrested.

That's what's always impressed me about these laws -- in theory, citizens need not carry papers, but if you don't, how does that "discussion" with the cop usually go? Of course *I* don't have to worry about this, I'm a fat old white guy. It's obviously discriminatory, it's intended to be discriminatory, and it's understood to be discriminatory. If *I* (and my kids) had to carry papers around all the time or risk arrest, I'd be furious. But I'm supposed to be okay with the law, because I'm white, so "we all know" that won't happen to me, it's only a problem for "other people". Bleah. This law has to go.

As someone who doesn't have US citizenship but who lives and works in the US, creating businesses that have hired hundreds of people (including plenty of H1-B holders) I have an alternate approach; I shall simply be avoiding Arizona as much as possible. I shall not be holding any group meetings there, I'll see what I can do to avoid conventions there or transfers through PHX and they can kiss goodbye to any prospect of my opening offices there. I'm probably too white to actually be harassed under this law but that doesn't make it any less disgusting to me.

I'm pretty sure that non-citizens were required to carry "registration" papers with them before. But hey, not everything gets enforced...

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1304

(e) Personal possession of registration or receipt card; penaltiesEvery alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him pursuant to subsection (d) of this section. Any alien who fails to comply with the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall upon conviction for each offense be fined not to exceed $100 or be imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both.

I don't really see what all this whining is about. My dad did not become a US citizen until after I graduated from high school and he had a resident alien card in his wallet next to his driver's license. His citizenship was delayed for a long time due to processing backlog. In that interim period though it didn't seem to be a big deal. Why is this hard?

I don't really see what all this whining is about. My dad did not become a US citizen until after I graduated from high school and he had a resident alien card in his wallet next to his driver's license. His citizenship was delayed for a long time due to processing backlog. In that interim period though it didn't seem to be a big deal. Why is this hard?

Oh, well then. Let me explain it to you.

You see, there's this famous expression "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" which means, essentially, sometimes actions which are well intentioned have negative consequences.

If you look narrowly at, well, just about anything you can spin it as a good thing. It's sometimes difficult to see the effects that something has on the global population, or society at large.

You see, even though the law is aimed at illegal immigrants, and only applies to illegal immigrants, it's pretty certain that a lot of legal citizens will have their rights violated because of this law.

Rights which we have enjoyed and held dear for many years.

If you take the trouble to see what effect this law will have on everyone, you realize (as does every other "whiner" on this thread), that the supreme court has just thrown out one of our most cherished rights, and hastened this country into the decay of fascism.

So, what happens when I get pulled over, and the police officer asks for proof that I am here legally, and I inform him that I am a naturalized US citizen (which I am), and thus am not required to carry any such paperwork? What if I was Illegal and said the same thing?

If the police can not question that lie, then the law is a farce anyway. If they can, then a whole lot of citizens are going to have their rights violated.

Many states have implemented "must identify [wikipedia.org]" laws, which state that you must identity yourself (correctly) to a policeman when asked. Depending on the state, you're also required to correctly answer other questions, such as "what you are doing there, where did you come from, where you are going".

These laws were brought to the attention of the supreme court, which stated flatly that these laws were constitutional so long as no proof of identity was required. Short of an arrest, police cannot demand proof of ID just for being in an area. (I don't believe that proof of license to drive a car on the highway has been addressed directly.)

With this new ruling, states can pass laws that allow police to detain anyone who cannot prove their identity, on the theory that they *might* be illegal immigrants.

The "must identify" laws effectively did away with anonymous meetings and anonymous protest. The police can simply wait outside any meeting and ask the participants their names as they leave.

Now they can demand proof of ID as well.

The right to peaceably assemble anonymously, the right to be in public anonymously, the right to protest anonymously is gone.

Okay, so the immigrant workers are going to carry their papers. And many of the illegal ones, or at least the smart ones, will carry forged papers - at least ones good enough to pass cursory inspection.

But what about the native-born citizens? Not everyone has a driver's license (or an Arizona license - would my Virginia driver's license count as "proof of citizenship"?), and I highly doubt citizens will be carrying around their birth certificates or anything - after all, they're not immigrants, why should they be concerned about an immigration law.

This is basically carte blanche for the police to harass anyone, and non-immigrants are going to be surprisingly affected.

In any case, I'm now mentally filing "Arizona" next to "East Germany", because both require me to have my papers in ordnung (and because both are effectively in the past - E.G. literally, Arizona figuratively).

The law says that people that are arrested can/may/should (I don't recall the exact words) have their immigration status checked. The important part is that the person must be arrested for some other crime FIRST before their "papers" are requested.

The law also specifically states that an officer cannot use this law as a primary offense for the arrest and cannot use race as the basis for checking immigration status. I realize that this does not really prevent officers from abusing the law but around here w

If an H-1B worker carries a California drivers license and is pulled over on a traffic stop in Arizona, the presumption of legal status with an Arizona driver's license goes away, said Jorge Lopez, co-chair of the Immigration & Global Migration Practice at Littler Mendelson.

I hate to break the news to ya, but it ain't just poo little Paco coming to work that's crossing the border,

On behalf of us conservative, middle-class, white Americans [1]: kiss my ass. "Poor little Paco" is some dude who wants a better living for his family. You don't get to blithely throw that baby out with the bathwater. Dismissing concerns about "those poor little brown people" is a giant "screw you" to everyone who's ever emigrated to America.

we are talking dope dealers,

...who wouldn't be an issue if we dropped this stupid War On Drugs,

human traffickers,

...who are heavily involved with the same drug warlords our insane policies have made rich,

some really serious scum are crossing that huge leaking sieve of a border as well.

So we have a few tens of millions of decent people who want to work hard at good jobs to send their kids to the schools they themselves didn't have. And then we have a few thousand who want to get rich off the drug laws we've almost custom-tailored to those ends. Ruling out the crime of illegal immigration itself, I'd wager that the crime rate among those immigrants is no more than equal that of natives in similar economic classes. I'd make a side wager that it would be less, as tight-knit communities self-police to keep the limelight off themselves, and because an illegal immigrant making $X is likely to feel much less poor than a native making the same amount.

So in short, you ought to be ashamed for writing off "poor little Paco", as though his desire to live better is no big deal. There are a lot more of him than there are of the scary drug kidnapper straw men you've used to justify your racist assholishness. You, personally, are the reason that the Republicans don't completely own the Latino vote. Their conservative culture would be a near-perfect match for the Republican platform if you could get over your squeamishness and quit driving them away.

[1] I'm still a fiscal conservative, but I couldn't abide by the social hyperconservatism of the current Republican party. I'm not gay and the occasional mai tai is the hardest drug I get near so it's not like I was feeling personally oppressed. It's just that I stopped feeling the need to tell other people how to live. You, too, can get over the "Rush says it so it must be right!" mindset and start enjoying the world around you. It's not nearly as scary as rightwing talk radio would lead you to believe.

A man looks at a line on the map and thinks, "on this side, my children go to poor schools until 3rd grade and then start a lifetime of manual labor. They'll have no more than I. On that side of the invisible line, they go to good schools and maybe work hard to become a doctor." Then he steps over the line. Yeah, that's just a hair's breadth away from slanging 'caine with a gang.

The fact that you think this is how humans reason about morality says a lot more about you than it does our new visitors.